


priorities other than marriage and conformity

by SiderumInCaelo



Category: The Handmaid's Tale (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Episode: s02x08 Women's Work, Feminist Themes, Ficlet, Gen, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Internalized Misogyny, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 15:14:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14876184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SiderumInCaelo/pseuds/SiderumInCaelo
Summary: "The right-wing woman makes what she considers the best deal."Serena Joy is not an idiot.





	priorities other than marriage and conformity

**Author's Note:**

> The title and quote in the summary are taken from Andrea Dworkin's book _Right-Wing Women _, which I read recently and which heavily influenced this attempt to get inside Serena's head. (A PDF of it can be easily found online, for anyone interested in reading it themselves.)__

Serena Joy is not an idiot.

She’s been called one often enough, from what felt like all sides – spoiled “feminist” harpies who couldn’t believe anyone would disagree with them, men who professed to be on her side but also kept telling her to be just a little bit less (shrill, insistent, hysterical) or more (attractive, accommodating, fun), even people who didn’t know a thing about her politics but knew everyone else thought she was a laughingstock – but they were wrong.

She has always been observant, and as she got older she started making connections between those observations, putting them into a larger framework.  She saw that men were reluctant to take “no” from a woman unless it was backed up by the presence of another man.  She saw that elderly single women, especially those without children, were left to fend for themselves.  She saw that birth control and abortion, rather than "liberating" women, just increased the pressure to be sexually available.

(That last one she learned firsthand.  She was in college, in her first serious relationship, and it had been going well until he started pushing for more.  When she balked, he couldn’t understand why – he had condoms, and if they didn’t work she could just get it taken care of, couldn’t she? 

In his mind, there was no other reason for her to say no.)

She wasn't pretending when she said she wanted a husband and a house and kids and to be a stay-at-home mother.  But if that’s also going to keep her safe from being accosted by other men, or living on the streets, or having to raise a child by herself –

Well.  That just makes it a win-win situation, really.

(She cries and cries, after the bullet turns her womb into no more than shredded, unfixable tissue.  She lets Fred believe she’s mourning her loss of potential motherhood, and it’s true.  But it’s more than that; it’s mourning the loss of protection being fertile, and therefore desirable, had granted her.  Fred had promised _in sickness and in health, till death do us part_ , but men promise lots of things.)

Serena Joy is not an idiot, because she knows what she wants and the best way of getting it.  But now, examining her lash-marks though tears, she thinks she should have realized that “best” doesn’t mean “good.”


End file.
